Chapter 1 of 6 / nothing loads
The browser says the address is invalid
This one is different from the rest of the chapter, because the browser has not tried to connect to anything. It looked at the string, decided it could not be an address, and stopped. That makes it the easiest problem here to settle.
What it usually turns out to be
| Cause | How often | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| A character lost while copying | Very common | Copy it again from the source, do not retype |
| A line break in the middle | Common when it came from a message or a post | Paste into a plain text box first and join the lines |
| An old sixteen character address | Occasional | Those were retired years ago and do not come back |
| A character that cannot exist in one | Occasional | See the alphabet below |
| Something that is not an address at all | Uncommon | A gateway domain or a shortened link. Different problem |
What a valid address looks like
- Exactly fifty six characters before
.onion. Not fifty five, not fifty seven. - Letters a to z and digits 2 to 7 only. There is no 0, no 1, no 8 and no 9 anywhere in one, ever.
- Case does not matter. Capitals are formatting, not a different address.
- Nothing after
.onionexcept a path. If a normal domain follows it, that is a gateway and it reads everything you type.
One thing you can stop worrying about
Because the alphabet leaves out the digits people confuse with letters, the usual worry about lookalike characters does not apply. There is no zero to mistake for an o and no one to mistake for an l. If an address looks odd to you, it is odd, and that instinct is worth trusting here.
How to check yours in five seconds
- Paste it into an empty text box rather than reading it in the address bar.
- Paste your saved copy directly underneath.
- See whether the two lines are the same length and line up. Two identical strings stacked are unmistakable, and you do not need to find the differing character to know they are not.
If you have nothing saved to compare against, that is the actual problem and it is worth fixing today rather than during the next outage. Keeping your own copy takes a minute.
If the string is fine and it still errors
Then it is not this page. A correct address that produces an error rather than a hang usually means the browser is not the one you think it is, or something is intercepting the request. Check that you are in Tor Browser and not an ordinary browser with a plugin, because an ordinary browser cannot resolve one of these at all and will say so in its own way.